Western Ghat Resort Near Pune - Dreamland Farm near Mulshi

Hi first short trip this monsoon – Dreamland Farm - resort Near Mulshi

Long awaited office trip picnic was due and hence decided to fix a plan nearby. Requirements were clear, start after office hour on Saturday and reach by return by Sunday afternoon.  Since its half day working on Sat afternoon, we generally plan this way. Start after office hours, reach to the place by evening, have fun in the evening at the resort followed by dinner at night. Wake up in the morning and go for nature walk, have a breakfast at location and check out. Reach home by afternoon so that you have time to spend with your family too on weekend.

This time we decided to move towards Mulshi and finalized the Dreamland resort. We enquired about all details to the office staff in advance.

Dreamland Farm Resort

Relaxing at "Dreamland Farm Resort"

View from Dreamland Farm Resort

Location –

Location of this resort what makes its Unique! It’s just 1 hour drive from Nigdi / Chandni Chauk. Once you reach Male village on Mulshi road, you have to take road towards Malhar machi resort. This road takes you to the Lonawala. Lonawla-Mulshi link load J It’s not the name of the road by the way. But it connects these two best locations. The resort is 10 km from that road. It’s ghat road. You drive up and up for reaching to this resort. For details refer the google map below.

Drive on this road is memorable. As road is narrow and surrounded by dense forest, drive / ride is always pleasant.  You cross the small bridge. The view of the dam from this bridge is clear, louder and awesome. Road condition is average. You come cross many waterfalls while driving on this road. Need not to mention this is best location for photography especially during Monsoon. After all this is located in Western Ghat. The nature beauty.

On the way towards Dreamland Farm Resort

Waterfall just started

Stay / Rate:

For tent stay : 1300 Rs (Includes evening high tea, dinner, tent stay, morning breakfast, swimming pool to use, rain dance and Music) We find this pretty reasonable. In rainy season tents are covered under the roof and glass from surrounding.

You have to do the advance booking by paying half of the amount.

If you would like to include the lunch in the above package, they offer 24 hour package too which is little bit costlier than this.

They also offer room stay. Rooms are in pretty good conditions facing back water of Mulshi dam. Room stay are little bit costlier but affordable.

If you are going along with your family prefer room stay than tent stay.

Parking at Dreamland Farm Resort

Rain Dance Dreamland Farm Resort

Food:

Food is nice and serving staff is also good. They co-operate. Personal Opinion is, avoid to try hotel dish’s at this place as caretaker’s staying here cook the food for you. Regular food (Chiken, roti, rice, pohe, upma, kanda bhaji, etc are best in taste here).

While booking the resort they do provide menu card. If you want anything in extra (Special dishesh like fish etc) you can order in advance so they will make arrangement on the date if your stay. Since this is located little bit away from city it’s not easy to go out and buy immediately. So prefer to provide your food preference (Veg/non veg) in advance.

Entertainment / Activities -

Swimming pool is in very good condition. Water is continuously circulating. Location of the swimming pool is also perfect surrounded by complete greenery. We preferred to play the water polo there. Believe me it’s amazing and memorable one. They do provide swimming costume on chargeable basis. It’s little bit of hike to reach to the tents from swimming pool.

Swimming Pool Dreamland Farm Resort

Swimming Pool Dreamland Farm Resort

The resort does have cricket kit, volleyball, football, carom, etc. No extra charges for this. Use and return the kit.

My experience -

Little but of our visit experience – We have reached there and within no time jumped in the swimming pool.  After playing water polo for one and half hour all were tired and took the bath and reached to the tent location. The staff was ready with garam garam Kanda Bhaji and Tea to freshen up us. It was mouth-watering. Immediately we took the cricket kit and spend half an hour playing cricket. Ball vanished in the big pot and game stopped. By the time it was very dark and we returned to the tents. Tents were ready with Pillow and Matress. Carrom was arranged and we spent some time playing carom. Dinner was ready by 9.00 and all were so hungry that we all attacked on Garam Garam delicious dinner. Chicken especially.

Cricket @ Dreamland Farm Resort

Morning Scenery Dreamland Farm Resort

Tents were comfortable for sleep. 5 people can accommodate in a tent. In morning we group of 4 people awaked early in the morning and started for nature walk. Resort is surrounded by huge line of hills from one side and Mulshi dam backwater to the other side. During Monsoon hills are covered with fog. You can imagine such morning scene, which you get chance to experience here.

We walked for 15 min on flat ground and we heard loud sound of waterfall coming from the dense forest down the hills from where this resort is located. We started down trail from the forest towards the waterfall from where sound was coming. After walking 15 min, we suddently come across the beautiful waterfall in the mid of the forest. This was Amazing. Just cant forget this place. We all enjoyed in the waterfall and spent almost an hour in the at this place. Below pictures will speak more than what I write.

Waterfall near Mulshi

Waterfall at Swimming Pool Dreamland Farm Resort

Video

After returning we have been served Garama Garam Kanda Pote and Kanda Bhaji. This was nice too. At around 10 am we checked out. It was raining slowly while returning to the home.

Overall this is nice place to spend one day away from home. 

ONE DAY EASY YET REFRESHING TREK TO ROHIDA FORT.......

Hello folks,

Monsoon in 2015 is in full swing this year in Pune and surroundings. As is the case with my gang of trekkers, we usually do weekend travel and cover 7-8 fort treks each monsoon season mixed with 5-7 bike rides in between. That is a total trip count of 12-15 weekends in the monsoon season stretching from June to Early October.

Each year, we try to mix up the trekking experience. We cover newer forts, introduce new people to trekking, do night treks etc. This year, we decided that the first trek should be to a completely new fort which we had not covered in the past years. June 21st was also the first ever International Yoga Day. So I came up with an idea of doing Yoga on Rohida also known as VichitraGad..! And just like that, a plan was set.

There were 5 of us on the trek - Myself, Ashutosh, Anurag, Raunaq & Suraj. We decided to take our car instead of biking because it was raining rather heavily. Reaching Rohida is easy. We took this simple route -

Direction - 

1. Start from Chandni Chowk
2. Take NH4 bypass towards Satara
3. After about 37kms, reach Kapurhol (the village where there is Balaji temple)
4. Balaji temple goes to the left. We had to take a right towards Bhor (landmark is a HPCL petrol pump on the left; the road to Bhor is bang opposite to this)
5. A 15kms ride on this (good condition) road took us to Bhor (take a slight right to go inside the village at the Y junction here instead of continuing on the good road)
6. Once inside the village, we went through a narrow bad condition road for about a km or two to reach Shivaji Chowk (ask anyone for the road to MandharDevi or simply Shivaji Chowk in case one feels lost)
7. Rohida is about 7kms from this Chowk. Take the MandharDevi route and travel for 4kms to find an arch on the right. Take this right turn.
8. A further 3km winding route takes one to Bazarwadi. The base village for the Rohida trek.

A trek from this point is an absolute pleasure with light rain to keep company. It takes about an hour to reach the top of the fort. Most of the fort is in shambles, though one can see the ramparts are still in reasonably good condition. We observed that a private group is trying to restore many sections of the fort, particularly the temple of Rohideshwar. Kudos to their efforts.

Rohida

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Enroute to the top..!

The doors to the forts are in good condition. One of the doors has two beautiful elephants carved in stone on either side. Once on top & a quick darshan of Rohideshwar, we started exploring the fort. We couldn't see much owing to the dense fog and clouds & rain. There's not much to see anyhow except for one Buruj (rampart) on each corner of the fort. Standing on one of these and looking down on a sea of rain clouds is a surreal experience. Do try this..!

Rohida First Darwaza

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Few steps towards second Darwaza

Rained-out, Wind-swept, Trekkers on a Buruj

Another Buruj..! Ghostly! Awesome Weather!

On top of the world!

Following some silly antics & strange dancing in the rain, we decided to walk back down. Here I must mention a peculiar thing about this fort. It had the Strongest gusts of wind that I have ever experienced on any fort. What's more, the strong winds come from all directions almost forming mini-typhoons. Better have good grip footwear, especially during rains and ofcourse walk carefully.

The downhill trek is very easy. We indulged ourselves to a round of Yoga to celebrate International Yoga Day. A round of photography and some 'Gaonwaalo, Suuuiiiiccciiidddeee' drama on top of a water tank at the base of the fort and we finished the trek. We hardly broke a sweat on this trek.

The second Darwaza with the Elephant carvings!

Road to Nowhere???

Yoga Dudes!

Reach for the Sky..!

I would recommend this trek for beginners. Simply carry your own water & food and take standard precautions of trekking i.e. wearing good footwear, not indulging in foolish dares and/or rushing oneself too much. And the whole group will have a great time.

With a total distance of about 60kms from Chandni Chowk & a hour's climb, one can plan this as a relaxed one day trek.

Hope you enjoy your Rohida experience. Do share your thoughts/experiences here in the comments section..! Cheers folks..! The Trekking Season has begun..!

SIMPLE YET MEMORABLE ONE DAY TREK TO RAJMACHI FORT NEAR PUNE…..

If you ask somebody about Rajmachi, many of people tell about the Rajmachi Point which is on the way to Pune Mumbai highway. It’s basically valley view point on the way which gives spectacular views of waterfalls and greenery during Monsoon season. But wait, the place I will be talking here is not the Rajmachi point, but the Fort Rajmachi. This is bit of off road riding from Lonavala. I will be narrating here my own experience with my friends to this fort.

Rajmachi Fort

On one of the weekends, we decided to go to Rajmachi fort. 6 vehicles and 12 friends, no one was aware much of about this fort. Just known things was, there is fort called Rajmachi near Lonawala. Near? How much? Haha. Its 20 km from Tungarli dam. Wait the road which I am talking here which is 20 km stretch from Tungarli is actually not for the vehicles but trekking road. Trekkers walk on this road to reach at this fort. No one from our group was aware of this fact. Stupid na? I also though the same when we actually started riding on that road. Because those were rainy days when we decided to visit this fort.  And when we actually started ride, we came to know that this is less traveled path. Because that was the road for pedestrians. We stopped in between to capture some group photos and surrounding valley view. Ride continued and then first obstacle seen. Heavy mud welcomed all of us and challenging us to ride through it. One by one we started riding through heavy mud on the way and dense forest to the side. And first victim of the mud… one vehicle slipped and both rider and pillion fall down in mud. They got up and started riding again. By the time all were cautious again. Vehicle speed was not more than 30 kmph.

Driving Directions From Pune - 

The nature and surrounding of that location was so unique that, you will just hear the bird singing, air whistling and nothing else. I was just wondering how about travelling at night on this road… woo.. I am sure it would be altogether different experience.

After crossing 10-12 km we come across waterfall. If we have to reach the Rajmachi fort, we must have to have cross that waterfall and ride through the flowing water in-between. Thank god the flow of the water was not so heavy and we dared to cross the waterfall. See the picture here to know how the road was. We successfully crossed that obstacle and final reached at the base of the Rajmachi fort. We parked our vehicle 1 km before the actual fort base since road forward was so muddy that one of our mate whit tried to ride forward slipped twice and finally decided not to ride ahead. So we all started walking.

Waterfall Crodding

While walking we come across the well, a house (looking haunted), unique trees and dense forest. We dared to climb over the haunted house and took some photographs. Check out the photo’s here.

Further going ahead we could see a small village named Udhewadi. We get some relief. We entered to the small restaurant and had some snacks and Garama Garam Tea. After reaching there we were able to see the two forts named, Manaranjan and Shrivardhan. Considering the time require to climb and travel back to home, all of us finalized to hike only one fort Manaranjan.

Finally we started trekking the fort. The difficulty level was easy and just took 35-40 minutes to reach at the top of the fort. Wind was flowing so fast and we were not able to hear each other’s voice easily. Rain started and we all were in the sky just in few minutes after reaching at the top. We all stared singing the song and danced. That was the moment which I will never ever forget in my lifetime. Some memories are life long and this is one of it.

If you really want to experience you must visit Rajmachi fort once and then you will realize whatever I am talking is not exaggeration but the reality. One of our team mate has created Video on this journey. I will try to post it on you tube after everybody’s permission.

After spending relaxed time there we started climbing down and reached at the base. We had tea once again at the same place and walked towards area where bikes were parked. Since rain had come, this made our return journey worse. Again couple bike slipped. To our good destiny, nobody’s bike got punctured nor damaged badly and we safely returned to Lonawala again. Now everybody was tired and wanted to reach home as early as possible.

All about it briefly, this Rajmachi fort is the strategically important fort during Shivaji Mahraj’s time and played important role in keeping watch over Konkan region. This can be realized after reaching the top of the fort. In rainy season this region all the more beautiful with silvery water falls, streams and lust green forests and meadows.

If you would like to have simple yet memorable and exciting trek and that too near and around Pune – Mumbai, then this is one of the fort to visit either visit friends or family. During mid of rainy season don’t try to get there with bike / car. It would be advisable to visit there during winter or just after rainy days. If you want to enjoy nature trill and ready to take challenges, then you may visit during mid of rainy days. But it’s preferable to take walk from Tungarli and not to take vehicle at the base of Rajmachi. If you would like to visit it in summer, please try that too and share your experiences here. I will be happy to hear from you so that I can also try out one more time.

You will get snacks and some food at the base village. I heard there are some stay options too in case you decide to stay at night. Need to check. If anybody has any updates on it, you are welcome to share.

Keep Travelling and exploring less explored places around world. 

Lonawala - Tea Break

Express way can been seen

On the way to Rajmachi Fort 

Muddy Road

Fort Rajmachi

Road to Rajmachi

Trekking Begins

Crossing Waterfall Lonawala on the way to Rajmachi

See the Red Soil

Greenery from Fort - Isolated area

Base of Fort

Parking at the base of Rajmachi Fort

Way

Posing for Snap

Rajmachi Fort Lonawala One Day Weekend picnic Spot from another angle

On the roof of haunted house at the base of Rajmachi fort

Well near haunted house

Village the Rajmachi Fort Base

Trekking

Exhausted

Temple in between - Rajmachi Fort

Trekking 

Finally reached at the top of Rajmachi Fort Loanawala

Return Journey

- महेश  आवटे